(📸 Amazon Teamsters)
Today, in more than 30 countries, workers are going on strike or protesting against Amazon as part of the Make Amazon Pay coalition. This is a movement of a few hundred groups around the world including some you might have heard of like the Progressive International, UNI Global Union, the Sunrise Movement, Oxfam, Our Revolution, and others.
The Make Amazon Pay movement is one that is of course interested first and foremost in improving conditions for workers—but they're also fighting against Amazon's monopoly and hegemony in the world, and demanding governments around the world take action against the company. They have a four page list of demands which I'll reproduce below.
We are workers, activists, and citizens from across the globe joining together to Make Amazon Pay its workers fairly, for its impact on the environment and its taxes.
We demand Amazon change its policies and governments change their laws to:
1. Improve the workplace by:
- raising workers’ pay in all Amazon warehouses in line with the increasing wealth of the corporation, including hazard pay and premium pay for peak times;
- negotiating adequate break time to ensure safe work;
- suspending the harsh productivity and surveillance regime Amazon has used to squeeze workers, which violates their rights and jeopardizes their safety;
- extending paid sick leave to all Amazon workers, so that no worker
has to choose between their health or their job; - allowing workers in sites without workplaces representation to independently elect health and safety commissions, which negotiate with Amazon to ensure a safe pace of work to avoid repeated injury;
- disclosing the corporation’s protocol for tracking and reporting COVID-19 cases, as well updated lists cases of infection and death among all workers in Amazon warehouses, by facility.
2. Provide job security to all by:
- ending all forms of casual employment and bogus self-employment or contractor status;
- establishing decent, transparent procedures through which workers can voice concerns and criticisms without fear of punishment;
- reinstating, immediately, all workers fired for speaking up about issues concerning the health and safety of Amazon workers and customers; engaging in efforts to organize fellow workers; or due to selective enforcement of internal policies.
3. Respect workers’ universal rights by:
- ending union busting, respecting workers’ right to organize, and unions’ rights to promote workers’ interests, and immediately stop all forms of spying on workers and organizers;
- giving unions access to Amazon worksites to inform workers on the benefits of unionization, so that all workers can freely choose whether to join a union without any fear of retaliation;
- bargaining with unions wherever they are present in order to reach collective agreements on the conditions and terms of workers’ employment at Amazon;
- ensuring workers’ rights throughout Amazon’s supply chains globally;
- sharing power with workers, for instance by welcoming worker representatives elected by their colleagues in different management levels, and by increasing options for workers to receive not only shares in the corporation, but also voting rights, so that the company moves towards a model of democratic governance.
4. Operate sustainably by:
- committing to zero emissions by 2030;
- ending all custom Amazon Web Services contracts for fossil fuel companies to accelerate oil and gas extraction;
- ending Amazon’s complicity in environmental racism, including by transitioning to electric vehicles first in communities most impacted by the corporation’s pollution;
- stopping all sponsoring of climate change denial;
- engaging workers, who have a right to know how their employer will operate sustainably, through a Just Transition process.
5. Pay back to society by:
- paying taxes in full, in the countries where the real economic activity takes place, ending tax abuse through profit shifting, loopholes and the use of tax havens, and providing full tax transparency;
- ending partnerships with police forces and immigration authorities that are institutionally racist;
- ceasing anti-competitive business practices that lead to monopolization;
- guaranteeing transparency over the privacy and use of consumers’ data, including Alexa/Echo devices, streaming and cloud services;
- guaranteeing privacy and confidentiality of all Internet of Things applications and software produced by or sold via Amazon, including Alexa/Echo devices, streaming and cloud services;
- stopping the development, deployment, and sale of devices and software that expand mass surveillance practices, such as Amazon Ring and facial recognition/biometrics software such as Rekognition.